Page 60 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

In a flash, his hand clapped over my mouth.

Arin snarled like it was pure willpower preventing him from hurling me into the lake until I stopped speaking.

“There is no if you survive. There is no future where it is my hand that ends your life.” This close, I could make out the austere lines of anguish twining around his rage.

“If your magic takes you, I will drag you back. It cannot have you.”

I caged my breath. Vaida’s voice found me in the meadow, her prophecy a soundless whisper in the dark.

Arin is consumed by what he loves. If asked, he would get on his knees and let it kill him.

A rush of guilt tightened my fingers around Arin’s sleeve. My entire life had been measured by the places I fled. I had never settled long enough to wonder about the people I left behind; the lives I destroyed.

I’m so sorry , I wanted to whisper. I am so sorry I did this to you. I never meant to drag you into my wreckage. I never expected you to stay.

I gently withdrew Arin’s hand from my mouth, my gaze steady. “Then have me yourself.”

Whatever concept of time marched outside the Mirayah, it failed to reach us here, in this meadow where Arin traced the lines of my face with his fingertips, traveling over each detail as he might pore over the valleys and canyons of his most precious map.

My mouth went dry as Arin lowered me onto his coat, his body carefully leveraged over mine.

He kissed me until I scarcely remembered my name—any of them.

His mouth revisited the places his fingers had traveled, pressing against the hollow of my throat, the pulse at my neck, the hasanas under my chin.

Heat carved through me like a merciless blade, leaving me shaky with a nameless, devouring need.

I grabbed the edge of my tunic and tried to shove it over my head, but the useless pile of buttons caught on a curl halfway through.

Before I could tear it loose, Arin laughed, brushing my hands away to untangle the trapped strand with blood-boiling patience.

When my turn came, I sat up and undid each strap of his vest with a restraint my quaking body did not share, working it down his arms and onto my discarded tunic.

I fought through the buttons of Arin’s black shirt, my stomach winding itself into tighter and tighter knots. A heavy hand settled on the back of my neck, coaxing my head up.

“Should I put a knife in your hand to calm you down?” he murmured, the amused rumble reverberating in the broad chest beneath my palms.

I scowled. “For someone so fond of insulting my sense of humor, you certainly seem to have developed a terrible one of your own.”

A grin broke out on Arin’s face, which did very little to soothe my nerves. I braced myself on his thighs, unconsciously flexing my fingers around the same muscles I’d watched kick a soldier halfway across the shore.

He was the single most beautiful thing I had ever laid hands upon, and I was not good at treating the beautiful things in my life gently.

When I finished unbuttoning his shirt, rising to my knees to draw it off the broad cliffs of his shoulders, I had to redirect my gaze from his bare upper half to the fire to give myself a chance to breathe.

No wonder this man wore his vests and his coats and his gloves.

Without those layers, the world might fall to distraction any time Arin entered the premises.

I shied away from meeting Arin’s gaze. He was allowing me a rare opportunity to see his plain thoughts, to peer inside the mind he fought so hard to protect. Baring himself in more ways than one, and I—

I lowered my hands to my lap, unable to do anything other than stare dumbly at the build of a man who had most assuredly never eaten a sesame candy in his entire life. The fig necklace sat beneath the hollow of his throat, framed by collarbones I could crack my skull against.

I beat back the sudden urge to cackle as I dropped my back to the grass, digging my knuckles into my eyes.

Arin leaned over me, bracing his arms on either side of my head as his lips ghosted over the furrowed lines at my forehead.

His low laugh warmed my skin, and I didn’t resist when he tugged my hands away from my face.

He’d laughed more in the last day than I had heard him laugh the entire time we’d known each other.

“I believe this is the longest you have ever stayed quiet. I find it rather disturbing.”

Before I could break my accidental vow of silence with a surly retort, the world spun. Arin flipped our positions, my knees hitting the ground on either side of his hips and straddling his waist. His hands traveled over my legs, curving around the backs of my knees.

I stared down at Arin, and I tried not to feel like a disciple of carnage pinning their sacrifice to the altar.

“You can touch me, Suraira.”

I unknotted my fingers from their nervous tangle.

Don’t shake , I warned my hands. Hold steady.

If Arin thought for half of a second that I was afraid of him, his Awaleen-forsaken vest would be back on before I could blink.

He wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain that my fear was for him.

For what the sheer depths of my hunger might wreak upon him.

If I learned how it felt to touch the untouchable Heir, how could I return to a world where this knowledge would only serve to haunt me?

Perhaps temptation was the Mirayah’s great trick. If threats would not compel me to stay, the promise of a lifetime of this very well might.

I gingerly mapped the scars curving along his side from the encounter with the Ruby Hound.

Convinced Arin would interfere and get himself killed, I’d used my magic to trap him while I disposed of the Urabi’s beast. The injuries from Galim’s Bend were hidden beneath his bandages, and I forced away the memory of digging my fingers into his wounds while he bled.

His scars were a reminder of a lesson learned; mine were a haunting, a tapestry of failure.

But when he stroked along the damaged skin on my back, I wondered if he read in my scars another story.

Before the nerves could sweep me away again, I slid to straddle Arin’s knees and kissed the sharp indent of his hip. He gasped, his stomach flexing beneath my palm. The hands fisted at his sides flew to my shoulders.

I had seen Arin of Nizahl’s eyes icy and unyielding, thunderous and terrifying, soft and fond. But never like this—unfocused, hazy, lost in sensation. A man existing in his body instead of only in his mind.

His hand splayed between my shoulder blades, the bite of his fingers a warm and possessive brand, and drew me back up to his mouth.

In the meadow of the ancient realm, I knew my days of running were coming to a close. I could go anywhere I wanted, but my destination would always be him. He had made himself the threshold to a world where it might finally be safe to land. To stay.

Arin turned us over, his body a powerful bow over mine, and I shaped silent promises against his shoulder.

I can’t promise to always stay , I said to his skin. But I can promise to never stop trying to come back.

A frog watched me from the edge of Hirun.

Awareness speared through the fog of sleep. I sat up immediately, grabbing my tunic from the pile beside me. The meadow had disappeared, taking the lake and lone date tree with it.

Trees surrounded us on every side. A symphony of crickets chirped from rotted logs scattered over the earth, and patches of frost-bitten dirt melted under the weary morning light.

We were back in Essam. The Mirayah had drifted while we slept and left us behind.

Relief melted through me, and I put my head in my hands before I embarrassed myself in front of the frog and started kissing the dead leaves.

Why had the Mirayah let us go? We had fallen asleep between its jaws, and it chilled me to think it could have decided to close its teeth around us as easily as it had decided to spit us back out.

But then, perhaps releasing your prey to the vicious wild was the greater punishment. A lesson to never shake the bars of your cage again.

Beside me, Arin slept soundly. His chest rose and fell with his even breaths, and I spent far too long staring at the smooth curve of the muscles in his arms. I possessed about as much artistic skill as a slab of wood, but I’d never been troubled by the fact until confronted with the tableau of a sleeping, bare-chested Nizahl Heir.

Upon closer examination, I flushed to the very tips of my ears at the crescent nail marks scattered across his neck and shoulders.

I had felt every ripple of tension in those arms as he spread himself over me; gripped the back of his neck and lowered his head to mine like a drought-stricken woman reaching for rain.

I was afraid to check his stomach for bite marks.

No matter the urge, Arin had indulged me. He had touched me like my pleasure was a sacred decree; unraveled me like he had taken a vow to do nothing else his entire life. I ached with the proof of his singular attention.

I turned my palms toward the sky. The wings webbed on each of my wrists glowed faintly, confirming what I already knew. What I had known as soon as consciousness crept in, carrying with it the too-familiar pressure against the back of my mind.

I had my magic again.

I tried to swallow past the dry lump in my throat. I had known it wouldn’t last. How could it? I had a kingdom to save, and he had a war on his horizon. Our paths would cross again, and it was up to Arin which side of the line he would be standing on when that time came.

The frog hopped closer, and my nose wrinkled at the rot and boiled-egg scent of Hirun.

I was going to get up. Just one more minute, and I would cast the same enchantment I had used over Arin in the Meridian Pass.

It would protect him from any dangers until he woke.

We had landed by raven-marked trees, which meant a Nizahl holding was nearby.

Arin would find it, and by the time he reunited with his soldiers, I would be in the Omal palace.

Just one more minute, and I would walk away.

The frog croaked. Before I could toss a rock at the pest, a silver beak speared the earth and swallowed it whole.

I gawked as the kitmer straightened. When another appeared at its side, I beamed in delight. I’d thought the Mirayah destroyed these two after it caught their magic in its net.

Niseeba fluttered her wings, stamping from foot to foot. Beside her, Ingaz rooted through a decaying log in search of crickets.

“I will be just a minute,” I reassured them quietly. I prodded around my coat and withdrew a sheaf of papers. Taking a fortifying breath, I folded them into the inner pocket of Arin’s coat. The entries had survived my fall into the sea with minimal smudging.

The Urabi would kill me for this. Efra would get to crow from the rooftops about how he knew it all along .

Maybe he was right. Maybe the seeds of doubt sown in the Nizahl Heir would never fully flourish. Maybe Supreme Rawain’s lies had rooted too deep in Arin’s mind for anything else to ever grow.

In the measure of monster or man, what tips the scales?

“Stay out of sight, but make sure he returns to his holding unharmed,” I murmured to Niseeba. Between the two of them, the stern kitmer seemed to have taken a liking to Arin. “Keep him safe.”

I slid onto Ingaz’s back and wrapped my hands around her horns. I took one last look at the fig necklace lying in the hollow of Arin’s throat.

The Commander of Nizahl had a choice to make.